💦AIP 116 Plunging Into The Adult Lake

For four years, I've lived at the edge of adulthood.

In the afternoon, I'm a Cornell University student with plenty of great friendships, club connections, and love for most of my classes. But in my mornings and nights, I'm something else entirely: an Educational YouTuber, podcaster, blogger, course creator, and entrepreneur.

One moment, I'll be checking the analytics on a YouTube video about The Zettelkasten System in Notetaking App Obsidian, which reached over 300,000 people. The next, I'm in a discussion section with ten other students talking about how we can fulfill basic psychological needs in foster care work. While other students grind hard for exams, do problem sets, or procrastinate at The Dairy Bar, I design thumbnails, write blog posts, or email people to be guests for my podcast. Sometimes I forget I'm a student until I'm jolted awake by the green class timeslot in my Google Calendar—crap, guess I better put my student costume on.

This has been the theme of my college experience: dipping my toes into the adult lake—without ever jumping in.

But now, as a Senior Cornell student, I'm graduating. I have to plunge into the adult lake fully, and I don't have the school life jacket as an excuse if I drown.

You'd think I'd feel ready. I've always felt more me in the creator entrepreneur space. The people are older, weirder, more realized. In contrast, many students I meet feel consumed by worries I just can't relate to anymore: insecurity talking to the opposite sex, grades, finding purpose, becoming healthier, friendship struggles, etc.

As a result, I've felt older than I have been for a long time. In my online world, I constantly get told comments like "You're so mature for your age," "I wouldn't have known you were in college unless you told me," and "You should kill yourself, save us oxygen." It's the internet, what did you expect?

But even with this connection to the adult world, having other aspects of adult life creep in has been disorienting. Oh crap, I have to pay rent myself next month. Wow, I actually have to work a job again. I need to get groceries to cook over the summer.

It's in moments like these where the anxiety starts to ratchet up.

Have I been faking this entire time?

A moment a few days ago struck me during this time. I was in a yurt—basically a big circular room for non-campers—training for my work at The Cornell Team And Leadership Center. The fireplace crackled in the corner, casing the room in a blanket of coziness. Once again, most of the people there were much older than me: mothers, teachers, retired grandparents.

One of the participants, a high school teacher of about fifty years old, was talking to me about their career ambivalence. They had worked as a teacher for the last twenty years, but they couldn't take it anymore. The students were becoming too rambunctious and disrespectful. So, they were moving into the field of instructional design. Their face ebbed between manic excitement and a blank, terrified stare toward the fireplace.

Then, they said something I'll never forget: "But it's okay cause even if it doesn't work out, I'll have my friends and family."

A huge weight came off my shoulders. Part of me had subconsciously put the full transition to the adult world on myself. I've come as far as I have to a large degree via my own initiative. But I don't have to do this alone. I can't do this alone. I'm only one person. I have family. I have friends. I have my dream partner.

Perhaps becoming an adult isn't a lake you step into on your own, but one you cannonball into with everyone you love. So if we drown, we all drown together, right?